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Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Find the perfect audience for your poems, stories, essays, and reviews by researching over one thousand literary magazines. In the Literary Magazines database you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to know before submitting your work to the publications that share your vision for your work.

Whether you’re pursuing the publication of your first book or your fifth, use the Small Presses database to research potential publishers, including submission guidelines, tips from the editors, contact information, and more.

Research more than one hundred agents who represent poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers, plus details about the kinds of books they’re interested in representing, their clients, and the best way to contact them.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Research newspapers, magazines, websites, and other publications that consistently publish book reviews using the Review Outlets database, which includes information about publishing schedules, submission guidelines, fees, and more.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Directory of Writers.

Download our free app to find readings and author events near you; explore indie bookstores, libraries, and other places of interest to writers; and connect with the literary community in your city or town.

Since our founding in 1970, Poets & Writers has served as an information clearinghouse of all matters related to writing. While the range of inquiries has been broad, common themes have emerged over time. Our Top Topics for Writers addresses the most popular and pressing issues, including literary agents, copyright, MFA programs, and self-publishing.

Well over ten thousand poets and writers maintain listings in this essential resource for writers interested in connecting with their peers, as well as editors, agents, and reading series coordinators looking for authors. Apply today to join the growing community of writers who stay in touch and informed using the Directory of Writers.

Find information about more than two hundred full- and low-residency programs in creative writing in our MFA Programs database, which includes details about deadlines, funding, class size, core faculty, and more. Also included is information about more than fifty MA and PhD programs.

Whether you are looking to meet up with fellow writers, agents, and editors, or trying to find the perfect environment to fuel your writing practice, the Conferences & Residencies is the essential resource for information about well over three hundred writing conferences, writers residencies, and literary festivals around the world.

Poets & Writers lists readings, workshops, and other literary events held in cities across the country. Whether you are an author on book tour or the curator of a reading series, the Literary Events Calendar can help you find your audience.

Discover historical sites, independent bookstores, literary archives, writing centers, and writers spaces in cities across the country using the Literary Places database—the best starting point for any literary journey, whether it’s for research or inspiration.

Take a guided tour of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, and many other cities. We asked authors, booksellers, publishers, editors, and others to share the places they go to connect with writers of the past, to the bars and cafés where today’s authors give readings, and to those sites that are most inspiring for writing.

Poets & Writers Live is an initiative developed in response to interviews and discussions with writers from all over the country. When we asked what Poets & Writers could do to support their writing practice, time and again writers expressed a desire for a more tangible connection to other writers. So, we came up with a living, breathing version of what Poets & Writers already offers: Poets & Writers Live.

Find details about every creative writing competition—including poetry contests, short story competitions, essay contests, awards for novels, grants for translators, and more—that we’ve published in the Grants & Awards section of Poets & Writers Magazine during the past year. We carefully review the practices and policies of each contest before including it in the Writing Contests database, the most trusted resource for legitimate writing contests available anywhere.

Hear from the editors of Poets & Writers Magazine as they offer a behind-the-scenes preview of the new issue, talk with contributors and authors featured in the magazine, and discuss the lighter side of writing, publishing, and the literary arts in this decidedly DIY podcast.

The Time Is Now offers weekly writing prompts in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. Sign up to get The Time Is Now, as well as a weekly book recommendation for guidance and inspiration, delivered to your inbox.

Ads in Poets & Writers Magazine and on pw.org are the best ways to reach a readership of serious poets and literary prose writers. Our audience trusts our editorial content and looks to it, and to relevant advertising, for information and guidance.

Each year the Readings & Workshops program provides support to hundreds of writers participating in literary readings and conducting writing workshops. Learn more about this program, our special events, projects, and supporters, and how to contact us.

Organizations based in California, New York State, as well as in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Seattle, New Orleans, Tucson, and Washington D.C., are welcome to apply for support from the Readings & Workshops program for their literary events.

Presenters and writers who need to submit a report after a P&W-supported event can get started here. Reports help us demonstrate the value of the Readings & Workshops program to funders and help us continue to offer support to writers and organizations hosting literary events.

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March/April 2016

Our Writers Retreats Issue features more than eighty free retreats, conferences, and festivals; practical advice for first-time colonists; Cheryl Strayed's Writers Camp; a conversation with Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri and translator Ann Goldstein; a profile of master essayist Annie Dillard; a library and residency in the Rockies; a report from literary Denmark; the Savvy Self-Publisher; and much more.

Features

Following the Mysteries: An Interview With Jhumpa Lahiri

by Ann Goldstein

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Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jhumpa Lahiri talks with translator Ann Goldstein about her decision to write her new book, In Other Words, in Italian; the search for freedom and happiness; and the mysteries of creativity, art, and life.

Annie Dillard has applied an endless curiosity and formidable intellect to elevate a searching and searing style of prose that has served as an example for generations of writers. A new collection, The Abundance, celebrates her masterful essays.

Special Section

With some help from Virginia Woolf, an author and Bread Loaf Camargo fellow discusses the complicated decision to leave her family for a month in order to attend a retreat in Cassis, France, and the necessity of finding one’s own space to create.

Free Retreats, Fairs, and Festivals: Inspiring Getaways for Writers on a Budget

by Staff

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Whether it’s a daylong festival, a weekend conference, or a four-week residency, there are countless options for writers looking for a retreat. We rounded up more than eighty free conferences, residencies, and festivals across the country so that...

Cheryl Strayed’s Writers Camp: Connection and Community in Big Sur

by Mary Stewart Atwell

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A novelist recounts her experiences at Cheryl Strayed’s Writers Camp at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, where she learned the importance of recognizing authenticity in her writing and finding her tribe.

Each year, countless writers vie for the prestigious “waitership” position at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. Former waiter and current reader Cara Blue Adams discusses her response to the short story “1997” by Mai Nardone, one of the...

News and Trends

With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Maylis de Kerangal’s latest novel, The Heart, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, and A. Igoni Barrett’s debut novel, Blackass, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.

Complete with maps, relevant passages, summaries, and links to booksellers, a new app tracks the real-life places found in books, allowing readers to discover and interact with literature in a whole new way.

Two Denver book lovers and sellers are constructing three massive land libraries in the Colorado Rockies that tell the story of the land through literature, education, and intellectual cross-pollination.

Small Press Points highlights the innovation and can-do spirit of independent presses. This issue features the Green Bay, Wisconsin–based Brain Mill Press, a new house committed to publishing writers of color, LGBTQ writers, and women.

The Practical Writer

In another installment of First, contributing editor Rigoberto González talks with Indo-Caribbean poet Rajiv Mohabir, discussing his debut collection, and how the poet uses language as identity and resistance while “feeling trapped inside a puzzle of ancestry.”

Can the publishing industry’s traditional business model compete with today’s marketplace? The president of a technology advisory firm and self-published author tries to answer that question through an analyst’s lens. Literary agent Cynthia Zigmund and publicist Rob Nissen weigh in.

The Literary Life

The Idea of Happiness: Report From Literary Denmark

by Stephen Morison Jr.

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In a continuing series examining the lives of writers in international writing communities, contributing editor Stephen Morison Jr. spends time with three authors in Denmark to explore the country’s literary scene, and the language of happiness.